For over half a century, DNA has dominated science and the popular imagination as the "secret of life." But over the last several decades, a quiet revolution has taken place. In a series of breathtaking discoveries, the biochemist Thomas R. Cech and a diverse cast of brilliant scientists have revealed that RNA—long overlooked as the passive servant of DNA—sits at the center of biology's greatest mysteries: How did life begin? What makes us human? Why do we get sick and grow old? In The...

**Exploring the most transformative breakthroughs in biology since the discovery of the double helix, a Nobel Prize–winning scientist unveils the RNA age."Lively and entertaining.…Biology will never be the same." —Adrian Woolfson, Wall Street JournalAn Economist Best Book of the Year**For over half a century, DNA has dominated science and the popular imagination as the “secret of life.” But over the last several decades, a quiet revolution has take...

Today, forest health and the management of threats towards it are attracting more and more attention on a global scale. This book covers the most recent advances in the management of forest diseases, including the epidemiology and infection biology of forest pathogens, and forest protection based on integrated pest and disease management approaches. A comprehensive range of diseases caused by viruses, bacteria, fungi and other organisms are discussed in detail, making this book essential r...

A revelatory work—grounded in the author's own pathbreaking research—that explores the capacity for meaning-making and connection through "musical daydreams."We've all had the experience: a song comes on, and suddenly we're not where we were. We're back in the past, or living out a future that never happened, or imagining a scene that never existed. In Transported, Elizabeth Margulis explores the phenomenon of musical daydreams—the vivid, spontaneous, emot...

**A Wall Street Journal Best Book To ReadA song comes on—and suddenly, you’re somewhere else.**Reliving past heartbreak. Picturing a serene future. Imagining a fantastical scene. Across genres, music has an uncanny ability to carry us into distinct inner worlds.In Transported, acclaimed music cognition researcher Elizabeth Margulis explores the phenomenon of musical daydreams—the vivid, spontaneous, emotionally charged images, stories, and...

This audiobook narrated by pioneering NASA scientist Kevin Peter Hand takes you inside the epic quest to find life on the water-rich moons at the outer reaches of the solar systemWhere is the best place to find life beyond Earth? We often look to Mars as the most promising site in our solar system, but recent scientific missions have revealed that some of the most habitable real estate may actually lie farther away. Beneath the frozen crusts of sev...

**“Constantly fascinating and impeccably reported...You won’t look at yourself in the same way again.” —Ed Yong, bestselling author of An Immense World and I Contain MultitudesA captivating exploration of the remarkable ways our DNA mutates over the course of our lives, with radical implications for the future of medicine**Our DNA is the indispensable set of instructions that guides our growth and vitality. The common misconception is that this molecular b...

**“Constantly fascinating and impeccably reported...You won’t look at yourself in the same way again.” —Ed Yong, bestselling author of An Immense World and I Contain MultitudesA captivating exploration of the remarkable ways our DNA mutates over the course of our lives, with radical implications for the future of medicine**Our DNA is the indispensable set of instructions that guides our growth and vitality. The common misconception is that this molecular b...

In this ambitious and groundbreaking history of the dollar, financial journalist and economic scholar Brendan Greeley makes a new argument about the origins of our money—and the people and nations who have surrendered to it.“Brimming with startling details, this is also serious financial history with a conclusion ripe for our unsettled times: Rulers and borders come and go, but the dollar has outlasted our illusions of sovereignty and control.”—Evan Osnos, ...

With Malcolm Gladwell–like clarity, Churn captures the most commonplace tensions of life in a multifaceted democracy and how to minimize their corrosive effects in everyday life.A pioneer of social psychology, Claude M. Steele is renowned for Whistling Vivaldi, a runaway bestseller that analyzed societal stereotypes—from beliefs about racial and gender test score gaps to the athletic prowess of Black men—and how t...

A boundary-breaking astrophysicist reimagines the universe—and our place within it—in this audacious journey through the Nine Realms of the cosmos.The universe gave rise to everything: stars and cells, minds and memories, purpose and pain. But it doesn’t care about us. It follows its own rules. And now, according to Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi, we finally understand enough about those rules to ask the big questions like we mean it: Why do we exist? Are we alone? How did we ...

How did the human mind emerge from the collection of neurons that makes up the brain? How did the brain acquire self-awareness, functional autonomy, language, and the ability to think, to understand itself and the world? In this volume in the Essential Knowledge series, Zoltan Torey offers an accessible and concise description of the evolutionary breakthrough that created the human mind. Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and linguistics, Torey reconstructs the se...